Abstract

Cue deletion was used to examine the contribution of various acoustic cues to the identification of the English stop consonants (/b/, /d/, /g/, /p/, /t/, /k/). Stimuli were based on tokens spoken by four talkers (two men and two women) in a syllable‐medial context (/(inverted vee) Cil /). Cues within five regions centered on the burst were examined: (1) the transition from the preceding vowel into consonant closure, (2) the closure interval, (3) the consonant release, (4) the initial transition from release to the following vowel, and (5) the final transition to the vowel. Each region either remained at the full normal amplitude or was attenuated fully (i.e., effectively replaced by silence). Four listeners who had normal hearing identified the 768 signals constructed from each of the possible combinations of attenuated and full‐amplitude regions (i.e., 32 combinations ×6 stimuli ×4 speakers). Analyses of these identification responses demonstrates the relative importance of each region, and of each combination of regions, for consonant identification. Acoustic measures explain some aspects of the confusion errors which occurred.